Here is M Designs Letter “H”. I hadn’t actually planned to stitch on this anytime soon, but went to a stitching GTG, hosted by the fabulous Kelly, and saw her letter H and became inspired! This is on cream linen, stitched with “Mulberry” Caron Waterlilies:

Although I’m enjoying stitching it, I remember now why I hate this kind of fabric (raw linen with gold sparkle, which didn’t show up in the pic)… it makes counting, especially those eyelets hard to get right the first time. The result is pretty tho! I’m thinking of making this one into an ornament after finishing as a biscornu. I’m imagining a beaded hanger. 🙂

I’m suffering a bit of post-GTG depression! 🙂 I had such a wonderful time with some of my favorite stitching friends and Kelly was a wonderful hostess… she had a yummy spread of for lunch and was kind enough to provide small gifts for those of us who attended. I can’t wait for the next GTG with these wonderful ladies.

This is the next installment of the Finished Project of the Week posts! In this series of posts, I feature a project that was finished prior to when I started blogging earlier this year. To see all Finished Project of the Week posts, you can click on the category in the links on the side of the page.

These are the Victoria Sampler Virtues Ornaments. I’ve stitched exactly 20 of these ornaments over the last few years, but changed the “virtues” to people’s names. What I love about these is that they are quick to stitch and I can give them to a whole family as a set, with their names, but each ornament is a little different.

I only took pictures the first full sets that I stitched. My favorites have been used several times and given to different families.

The pictures are a little misleading, but I promise that all of theses are centered. I usually put batting underneath the stitched side of the ornament and this, plus the angle of the camera make these look off-center.

These are finished using ornament forms that I purchased from the Silver Needle (click link, then scroll down). The forms make finishing easy and quick and the edges look so nice that I didn’t really feel the need to use any cording and just slip ribbon between the pieces when glueing the front and the back of the form together. The back of the ornaments are covered with printed fabric – usually green.

This could be the first year that I don’t stitch any of these for friends or family… I thought about it, but after 20 of them, I might be a little burned out!

I took this picture last night! It was like 20 degrees here today! Traction control blinked on my dash on the way to work this morning!!!! Its too early for this! I hope my fellow midwest/Indiana stitchers didn’t have to wake up to this today!

In other news, I bought plane tickets for the week of Christmas to go visit my parents in Oklahoma. It turns out that business is so slow that my company is closing our plant down for the whole week. Nice, as I’d like the extra time off, but not so nice because even though I’m salaried, I’m not getting paid for the week. Anyway, I’m leaving Saturday and coming home on Christmas Eve so I can spend Christmas with my DBF and not leave him home alone as he doesn’t have the time off to go with me.

I’m sorely tempted while I’m there to take a day and drive to The Silver Needle in Tulsa – it’s a good 3 hour drive tho. We’ll see how my plans work out while I’m there…

Right now I’m stitching the Holiday Holly Sweetheart Tree Biscornu kit. I haven’t been super motivated to come home from work and stitch, so its going pretty slowly. I’m going to a stitching GTG this weekend tho, and hopefully will make some decent progress!

I’m so excited!!! I’ve wanted to try stitching and finishing a biscornu for quite some time now, but hadn’t really found any smallish square patterns that I wanted to stitch…. So in the Sweetheart Tree booth at Celebration of Needlework, I saw the Rhodes Butterfly Biscornu kit!

I had a lot of fun doing the finishing until Saturday night at about 8:00 when I ran out of the beads used along the edging… I was about 6 beads short. Hobby Lobby was already closed, and the two LNS in the area that I normally visit are closed on Sunday.

I finally remembered that Erica’s Craft and Sewing Center is normally open for a couple of hours on Sunday. I went there today and found that they had one pack of the beads left! I was surprised to find that they have lots and lots of Mill Hill Beads, considering that they are primarly a quilting store with a very small cross stitch section. Anyway, I got my beads and was able to finish up this afternoon.

I’m totally thrilled with it and after DBF did the appropriate amount of admiration for my handiwork, he commented that I should’ve stuffed it with catnip…. um no.

So, I’m totally ready to finish another one of these kits… I can choose from the Holly kit, the Shamrock kit, and the Cat Lover’s kit…..

So….. I’m happy with the finishing, even though its not quite as perfect as I hoped. I’m happy enough though, to call it done and stop obsessing and removing the lining and trying to get it more and more perfect.

The front:

The back:

Opened up:

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